Trek In Time

Matt and Sean talk about ghost-ships, horror, genre-bending, and A+ storytelling. Season 3 of Star Trek Enterprise is finally hitting its stride and we’re getting some excellent television. This episode is a real nail biter.

Show Notes

https://youtu.be/26hLFhgt5G0

Matt and Sean talk about ghost-ships, horror, genre-bending, and A+ storytelling. Season 3 of Star Trek Enterprise is finally hitting its stride and we’re getting some excellent television. This episode is a real nail biter. 

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Creators & Guests

Host
Matt Ferrell
Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts
Host
Sean Ferrell 🐨
Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Trek In Time?

Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.

In this episode of Trek. End time. We're gonna talk about how we should fear the walking Vulcans. That's right. We're gonna enterprise episode five of season three impulse, which dropped on October 8th, 2003. Hey, everybody. Welcome to track. End time. I'm sure you know where you are by now, but I'm gonna say all this anyway, here at Trek and time we watch each and every episode of start Trek in chronological order.

We also talk about how things were in our world at the time of the original broadcast. So we're currently in season three of enterprise, and that means we're in 2003 in our world. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I read some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. I write some stuff for adults and with me as my brother.

Who is the guru and inquisitor behind the YouTube channel undecided with Matt Ferrell

, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. How about yourself? I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to this discussion last week. We had a pretty big gap in our opinions about the show.

Yeah. And I'm sure that will come up in the comments in just a moment. But I think this episode I'm anticipating that Matt and I are back to being willing to call each other brother once. Yes.

So speaking of those comments, Matt, any thoughts about our last episode, which was about Rajiin yes.

We had a few comments. I just wanted to bring up one from, uh, Karen Colette. She said, I agree with the brother that gave the show a D but I'm not sure which one that

is. . Thank you, Karen. That's me. It's Sean.

That's Sean. Yes.

Another one from Ebos. Kind of agrees with you on this one, again, another cog in the machine episode, for sure. Like the city of the water concept, the street set looks semi lively. I always like the recurring guest, starring furniture set pieces. strangely this ground connects the make believe to real life.

For me, sort of the uncanny valley vibe that pulls me in as for this episode, it was rather bland and adding little to the overall adventure, getting that spy on the ship and letting her stay longer may have reinforced the reason why they put her on the. The way they did using her mental abilities to really harm the crew's spirit.

Mm-hmm overall, both. You guys nailed this one in the head. You all have a good one. I thought that was actually a really good point. It would've been interesting if they had left arm, the ship for several episodes. Yeah. And had her revealed and pulled off that would've been far more interesting.

It would've been far more interesting to see.

As you know, Ebos and now you are pointing out. I really love the idea of a character coming on of growing relationship with Archer, potentially a subtle undermining of, through some sort of ability to just kind of drain the crew of morale. Yeah. Which is something. That the episode we're gonna talk about today is addressing the fact that the crew is exhausted.

So it's, it's right within the vein of what they would've been talking about, but they chose to do a standalone episode, which as you know, everybody who's been our regular listener knows Matt was okay with, I was not so hot about missed opportunity.

Yeah. And the last comment was from pelgo 69, which said I have one change that you both could agree with that resolves your points have read, be the only target of her advances.

He already has shown his problems leading with the wrong head mm-hmm and his hero complex. Would've put the ship in danger. It would've been a great message to the viewers too. Also her introduction could have just been trying to escape a pursuer instead of the slave market. And the story could have been the same.

And this last comment I wanted to bring up during our show, but didn't get a chance. Mm-hmm your discussion. Makes me wonder how you guys handled the Orion's when we get there. Mm. That kind of ties to when I was saying to you. This is kind of like par for the course, for this section of the galaxy, it's this wild west, you know, slavery's a thing, you know, mm-hmm, , prostitution's a thing it's like, that's the Orion syndicate through the entire star Trek series, even in the new shows.

Like even, even the new shows that we're watching. It's, it's still very much a part of it. Mm-hmm . So where you had a problem with the whole. um, I don't know what the right way to put it is the, the prostitution story and her using her feminine wilds mm-hmm to get what she wanted. That's like par for the course for star Trek.

Like throughout every show, even the new ones. Right.

I, the way I'm gonna phrase this is going to sound weird. I had no problem with the prostitution. Yeah. Yeah. I know your

problem was what

she'd done. The ship once she's on the ship. Yes. I it's the use of the character where it, for me, it was about the use of the character being diluted down to there's.

One thing about her. There's just one thing about her, right. And it was that it was just the sexuality component. That was my issue. The idea of the slavery, the prostitution, the sex work as a part of star Trek lore of there being parts of the galaxy, where people are not used or given liberties that are free and fair, uh, mistreatment.

All of that is like you said, it's par for the course in start Trek. And it's an important part of it because if you don't have. If you have nothing to push off against, then your morality is never tested. And your, and these are ultimately the best track for me is the morality play the idea of somebody standing there and saying in any other circumstance, I would know what I'm doing is right.

Why does it feel wrong right now? That for me is what star Trek is so great at. So,

but that's what, that's what I thought yeah. Was nice about his comment of what if they had just made it about Reed because he's such a horn dog. Yeah. He doesn't think things through clearly. And they've established this numerous times before she could have seen him as the weak.

And she could have gone after him deliberately because he was the weak link. Yeah. And that could have been actually part of a growth story for him of like, oh man. it

could have been part of a growth story. Yeah. And it could have been an indication of the more Machiavellian. Uh, chess playing the chess player nature of what she's supposed to be.

Exactly. If she's going to be a spy, she has to be three steps ahead of everybody. So she would be playing different angles, a romantic angle with one character, a sort of, uh, friend partner to another character working her way into different people's lives in different ways. All the while undermining relationships, you know, it would've been, it could have been.

I think a lot more gripping than what was presented. I agree with you on that. So thank you everybody. For those comments as usual, uh, the comments are a huge component of what we are trying to do here, and we love reading the comments we love hearing from you guys. You can reach out through the. Comment section on YouTube.

You can reach out directly through contact information in the podcast description, but before we move on, I'm waiting for that noise to stop. It's the read alert as everybody will recognize. And what that means is it's time for Matt to jump in with the Wikipedia description and Matt, I think you're gonna be, I won't say pleased.

Happy. I won't say pleased, but I will say, I think you'll be surprised at this one. Okay. We'll see. Impulse

is the 57th episode of the American science fiction television series star Trek enterprise. The fifth episode of season three, the episode was written by the by story editor, Jonathan Fernandez, from a story by Fernandez and Terry Mattis.

It first aired, uh, October 8th, 2003 on the EPN network in the United States. The episode was described by paramount pictures as a , as close to a horror show. As star Trek gets. Set in the 22nd century, the series follows the adventures of the first star fleet Starship, enterprise registration NX-01

in this episode, while investigating the dead Delphic expanse for a Xindis super weapon, the enterprise responds to the distress call of a Vulcan ship. I will say that is far better than normal. I will not say it's good,

but it's far better than normal. Exactly. Exactly. That was my feeling as well. So as you just mentioned, this one was by Jonathan Fernandez, as writer from a story with.

Both Jonathan Fernandez and Terry Mattas, it was directed by David Livingston. And at this point I'd like to jump forward to some information that I thought was interesting about David Livingston's, directorial history with star Trek. He directed a total of 62 episodes overall, including 15 episodes of enterprise.

This is not the first time NORRA will it be the last time that we see his work and overall, both Matt and I have commented. Has worked before he clearly knows what he's doing. You don't get direct 62 episodes of a large franchise by mistake. Like this guy's still here. What? He just directed a 61st episode.

Ah, I gave him one more and then we kick him out. No, that's not how it happens. So this is, I think an episode that really, really benefited from a experienced hand on the helm. Mm-hmm because mm-hmm, . This one, has, it has a number of moving parts. It has storylines that on one level look like they're not intricately interwoven, but ultimately they do have that kind of synergy that you wanna see from your, a plot and your blot.

You really want to have that moment of like, oh, now it's all coming together. And there's really nice way. And the pacing of this. Had to be it's very tight because there's a lot happening. You can't spend a lot of downtime, but you still wanna have those moments where people get an opportunity to really demonstrate internal conflict and internal growth.

And when you stop and think about all the things that happen in this episode, It's a lot. Mr. Livingston did quite, quite a good job of getting through all of that. So as was mentioned, this episode aired on October 8th, 2003. And what was the world like at the time that it aired? Well, Matt, you finally answered the musical question.

The black IPS were asking for many a week. You found out where the love was. And then you started to shake your tail tail feather with Nellie P Diddy and Murphy Lee. I sure did. You did. That for anybody who's not watching this on YouTube. The, the grin on his face is worth a thousand words. And in movie theaters, well, a little film called school of rock premiered and earned $19 million.

It would go on to earn about 130 million. And of course, School of rock is the comedy directed by Richard Linkletter and it's stars, Jack Black, Joan Kuk, Mike White, and Sarah Silverman. And it's storyline. I don't even know that I need to share this with anybody, but here you go. Jack Black plays a guy who basically is trying to con a school by filling in as a teacher in a music class, but he connects with the kids.

He teaches them something about life. It's basically. Upbeat dead poet society. Yes, it is. And it's gone on to have a Broadway show based on it. It's it's fun. It's a fun movie. It's a fun movie and it's, it's worth checking out. It is not at this time streaming anywhere, but it is available per purchase and rent and on television on October 8th, 2003, what were we watching?

Well, there were about 4 million of us watching star Trek enterprise. Unfortunately, there were 10 million of us watching my wife and kids and it's all relative quick. Matt, tell me what it's all relative is about. I have no idea. meanwhile, on CBS, people were watching 60 minutes too, watching stories about American hostages being held in Columbia on Fox.

There was a baseball game, two little teams called the red Sox and the Yankees were. Playing each other. And on NBC ed was earning about 8 million viewers. And on the WB, Smallville was earning 6.7 million, which means that for the week enterprise was the low show on the totem pole. But it's holding steady.

It's holding

pretty steady. It had its core audience. It never grew past that core audience. I think that's the lesson we're seeing week after week after week and in the news. Well, I thought this was an interesting story from the New York times, October 8th, by Dennis. Overby the new model of the universe.

It's shaped like a soccer ball in an unusual log jam of contradictory claims, a revolutionary new model of the universe as a soccer ball arrives on astronomers desks on Thursday morning, at least slightly depl. In a paper being published in the journal nature, Dr. Jeffrey Weeks, an independent mathematician in Canton, New York, and his colleagues suggest based on analysis of maps of the big bang.

That space is a kind of 12 sided hall of mirrors in which the illusion of infinity is created by looking out and seeing multiple copies of the same stars. If that model is correct. Dr. We said it would rule out a popular theory of the big bang that asserts that our own observable universe is just a bubble among others and a realm, a vastly larger extent.

It means we can just about see the whole universe. Now. Dr. Week said the article went on from there to explain how this is a theory that even as it was being presented was already being. Debated and argued with some arguing that the entire paper included evidence of its own theory, not being true, that it depended upon the mathematics and the mathematics didn't work.

And. I thought it was interesting to follow up on that with this article from quantum magazine in 2019, which was writing about Steven Hawking and Hawking was talking about his no boundary proposal in which Hawking argued that there was effectively. No big bang that the universe had always existed. The no boundary proposal, which Hawking and his frequent collaborator, James Hardell fully formulated in a 19 90, 19 83 paper envisions the cosmos, having the shape of a shuttle cock just as a shuttle.

Cock has a diameter of zero at its bottom. Most point. And then gradually widens on the way up the universe. According to the no boundary proposal, smoothly expanded from a point of zero size Harel and Hawking, derived a formula describing the whole shuttle cock, the so-called wave function of the universe that encompasses the entire past, present and future at once making moot all contemplation of seeds of creation, a creator, or any transition from a time before.

Asking what came before the big bang is meaningless, according to the no boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to Hawking said in another lecture in 2016, it would be like asking what lies south of the south pole. I just love this. Yeah. The very shape and nature of the universe being so debatable.

Yeah. And I think that. For me, it captured my eye and it captured my imagination because I think it ties in nicely with what enterprise is trying to do at this point. Introduce a section of space where the rules that we've all come to understand within star Trek simply don't apply. Yep. And not with a lot of scientific techno babble to explain it and dismiss it very early.

Yeah. Oh, these waves of distortion they're caused by a blah, blah, blah. And then everybody just goes along their Merry way. This was not a problem that was presented. I can imagine any number of times where there's been an episode of say next generation where something happens and by the end of the episode, they're like, but now that we know what it looks like, we've figured out has set up our sensors and we won't have that problem again.

Yep. They're not doing that here. They're presenting a problem. With which the characters are effectively going have to massively reshape their understanding of what's going on around them. Yeah. And I thought it was a, a neat set of articles that kind of pointed out that happening in real life, that these theories, there's another theory that was also referred to by Hawking Hawkings theory, basically.

Uh, Dismissed the soccer ball and another model, which was the caterpillar theory, which was a universe shaped like a caterpillar. And by the mathematics that were at work, the quantum mathematics, basically those models undo themselves. So. The mysteries of the universe are being debated right now and are ultimately on some level likely unknowable, but that doesn't stop people from trying to figure them out.

And here in this star Trek enterprise, season three, they're throwing that level of question mark into their storytelling. And it's part of our conversation between Matt and me and all of your comments about how effective that is. So that brings us all very nicely. See what I did. I see what you did there, it brings us very nicely to today's episode that we're discussing, which is impulse and just kind of big picture.

Matt, what did you think? Let

me just say the first note I wrote to myself was night

of the living Vulcan. Yeah. this is,

this is just a straight up zombie movie and it's exceptional. I love this episode. I was gripped from the beginning to the end, the op the cold open of this. Was probably one of the shortest cold openings they've ever had on this series.

And it was, uh, okay, you got me. As soon as it starts, it was, I was in from the very first moment all the way through, it was in my opinion, expertly crafted because there was so much that happens in this. It was very plot oriented, but it didn't

feel like

it mm-hmm it, you felt very, I felt very immersed through the entire thing.

There was enough character development to keep me interested. Just overall. I was just very pleased how they had some growth with TOPA the captain. I dunno if we just wanna jump right to the spoilers at the end of the show,

you can talk about, I think what you can talk about whatever you need to

yeah.

Like there's over a hundred Vulcans on this ship that are basically the living dead. Yeah. But what was interesting to me about the zombies on this was they're not. Stupid mindless drones. They're intelligent Vulcans that just clearly have no like filter. Yeah. And they're just mad. So they are constantly.

Shifting the dynamics of the situation, because they're, they're basically like, it's like a chess game. They're cornering the crew that are trapped on the ship with them in very intelligent ways. Yeah. Of like anticipating what they're doing. And it's terrifying cuz here's these very intelligent Vulcans that are like rabid dogs coming after you.

And it was, the stakes were incredibly high. um, the, the red shirts of star Trek, which on enterprise are the Marines. Mm-hmm I really like what they did with the Marine here. Yeah. I mean, he, he didn't have a whole lot, but I was, I was concerned about him. Yeah. I couldn't remember. Does he die or not? Yeah, I couldn't actually remember.

And it was like, I was actually concerned, like when he got hurt, he's bleeding out and all this stuff is happening and yet he's still pushing forward, like a Marine. Yeah. It was like, it was like, there was so much in this episode that just had me going. Because I couldn't remember who died, who didn't die, who got through, who didn't get hurt.

It, it, it, it reminded me of the first time I watched the episode mm-hmm of like, I was just in it. And so this hasn't, this hasn't happened a lot to me in watching star Trek. Cause I've seen these so many times, but this was just like a fun brush of a, like a fresh air, just a breath of fresh air for me watching this episode and

said a lot of fun.

Yeah. I think it did a lot of very, very smart things. And I, I, I think I've said before in this podcast, I'm not a big fan of the. Opener, which then is followed by 24 hours earlier. Like I'm not a big fan of that. If you're gonna do that, you have to make it work. And it has to make sense. And it ultimately has to do a very tricky thing, which is by the time you catch up in the main story to what you used as your opener, you have to have done a good job of making me forget.

that that was the opener. And it's very hard to do that. And this did it beautifully. And I think it did it as you pointed out, because it was so brief. Mm-hmm it did not feel like, well, if this is such an important moment, very often, what happens in those kind of teaser openings is this, if this is such an important moment to start the story with why are you not just continuing from this moment?

Mm-hmm but what they manage to do. That opening of to Paul clearly out of her mind, they limited it by making it so short. It was just a, to Paul who's out of her mind. That's all we know. Yep. And we know something bad has happened. She is like the others. So that's all you need to know in that moment. And it works really, really well.

Getting back then to the previous day. I think this sets up, it is like this episode pulled not only from night of the living dead, the walking dead 28 days later, it also pulls from night, Maryland Elm street. It pulls from aliens. It's, it's pulling very smartly from all these different things to fit into.

Like it's almost as if they said, well, we want to do horror. What does star Trek have that offers us different lanes into different types of horror, because you are in a space faring show with space weapons and now space Marines. So an alien story makes sense. You're also dealing with the psychology of the people.

So a nightmare Elm street makes sense, and you're in an expansive space where things are going wrong and things are breaking down and there's something present that causes a problem for this one particular species. It's that suddenly zombie story makes sense. And they were, they did a beautiful job of saying like, well, we can make all of those work together in a way that if you were to spitball it and say to me, what would you think if we tried to say, we're gonna tell you a three different horror genre story in star Trek.

In one episode, I would be like, you are biting off way too much. Just make three separate episodes, but they did it and it works. They even have. So much nice stuff that is pushing forward. The storyline of being in the expanse, because they've now established that they need Trium D and they've found. What could be a huge, beneficial repository of it for themselves in a horrifying asteroid field, in a H in a asteroid field.

The graphics of that, the special effects of that I felt were magnificent. Cuz you see these asteroids literally winking in change, direction of space so that they're going through what might be little mini worm holes. And so there's no direction to anything. And I thought that was magnificent and it's.

It actually reminded me of another movie, which was event horizon. The idea. Oh yeah. Of you're going to a place and the place is the problem. Not just like it's, it's the proximity to this thing. And the fact that the trillion D ends up being toxic to the Vulcans and it causes this mental breakdown, their, their facility to be fully cognitively present gets broken down so that they revert to, as to Paul says we were a paranoid and violent species and it's that paranoia and violence that's on display in.

As Matt pointed out, they don't become stupid. But their paranoia is driving their decision making. And to Paul begins to exhibit that more and more. The episode writing does a masterful job of a drip, drip, drip, drip. If she's on a scale of zero being normal and 10 being full blown, paranoia outbreak, as the episode goes, you can see, well, now she heard a one she's at a two.

Yeah. She's at a three. She's getting worse. Yeah. It's every time that you have a conversation with, with her. Archer is the constant that is holding her steady for most of the episode. So you get beautiful relationship storytelling in this, the, the demonstration of her with Archer, her with trip, when trip suggests they're gonna do a movie night trip suggesting a movie night because the crew is so exhausted and we need to do something for morale.

And he is the only one on the crew that can say that to the captain. Because he's the only one that both he and the captain know between the two of us, I'm the angrier one mm-hmm like trip has that sister that he lost. So even that is a beautiful masterful touch in this episode to say, trip is looking at all of this, but he's got one eye on the crew and he's saying like, we're not doing.

Let's do something to make ourselves feel better. So even that little bit of character relationship discussion was good is beautiful. It's really, this episode feels like it's so much more than how long is it? 42 minutes, 44 minutes. It feels like it's, it feels like it's longer than that in a good way. It feels like it's longer than in a magnificent way.

It feels like those, those great episodes where you can't believe that. Have only been sitting there for only 40 minutes and it told so much of a story. So can I, can

I, when you brought up how to Paul's escalation from one to two to three to four, that was one of my favorite parts of this episode. Yeah.

And it goes down to the really good directing and really good acting does a great job. Blalock is a really good actress in this show and I think it's. she's presented as the sex symbol, but she is a way more than that. She is an exceptional actress in, in her role as to Paul and she escalates it beautifully and it probably was also the, uh, directing that helped her achieve that performance mm-hmm

And the other thing about this episode that really stood out to me was so sometimes in star Trek, probably for budgetary reasons, They tend to keep things confined and small. Yeah. And even when it's an action episode, their action sequences are kind of small scale. Um, on small sets and things like that, this episode felt bigger and grander to me yeah.

Than a typical episode. And like an action film. It had a few se had a few set pieces for action sequences that were just like, yeah, give me more. And one of those that really stood out to me was the jumping sequence. Yeah. Where the, the shot that was going down to the ship, you could see a hole was just burst to the ship and they had to jump over it.

That entire sequence. Was nail biting. Yeah. And part of the reason for that was, I couldn't remember if the Marine died or not. Yeah. And in that sequence with, with, with re. Basically yelling at him, you get across, he, he wanted to be the last one across. Yeah. But Reid forces him to go cause he's injured and halfway across a zombie grabs his leg and he starts teetering and I'm like, oh God, this is what, yeah.

This is where he guys. Yeah. And he managed just to kick the guy off and then leaped safety. And I was like, yes. Yeah. And I was like, arms in the air. Like, this is fantastic. It was that set piece of that sequence was just so masterfully done and re knocking the, uh, IBE. Yeah, like off, so they can't follow them and all the Vulcans, like looking at 'em like, no.

Yeah, because they're all angry cuz now they can't get to 'em and then they start leaping trying to get across just falling to their deaths. Yeah. Cause they're just still trying to get at them. All of that was so. Beautifully zombie movie, gigantic movie set piece. It just felt so good. And it's like, I wish

we had more of that.

Yeah.

show. Cause it shows they can do it. They, they showed they can do it. Yeah, it was so good. Yeah.

The corporal Hawkins is the name of the, yes, the Marine in this one and he is played by Sean McGown and, and he did a great job with it too. Very good job. I mean, even like every line of dialog. Literally this purpose.

This is an episode where every line of dialogue has a purpose and it's done well. It, and that comes down to not only good writing, but good directing with like really making everything feel purpose. There is a beautiful moment where they're marching through. They've just incor. They've just experienced the first attack by Vulcans.

And the first attack is scary enough because you end up with like, there's two over there. And then there's two more down this hall and oh my God, here come two more. Now they're gonna March their way through the ship. They're trying to figure out where they're gonna go and how they're gonna get there.

And corporal Hawkins switches his gun. To kill mm-hmm and to Paul takes offense at this, and she reminds him like, we are on a rescue mission. This that is not an appropriate response. You should not do that. I am telling you not to, he doesn't wanna listen to her. The captain has to say something later on, he apologizes in a moment where it's calmer.

He says you were right. I'm sorry. I did that. It won't happen again. And I was just like, Come on corporal Hawkins. This is like suddenly I'm totally team Hawkins. Like here's a guy. Yes. Who in this one episode and we I've only seen him up to this point and I'm like, this guy has demonstrated a willingness to learn a willingness to accept his mistakes, to apologize for his error.

Come on. This is starting to feel like, oh my God, is this a new character? And when that's funny. Yeah. And then they break their own. When you, when you have a series that is, that has a rule as well, known as star Trek, which is the red shirt always dies. Yeah. When you have, when have that role and you break your own cliche.

It, it does something to the audience that really works. It really works to grip the audience and capture him by surprise. Yeah, I was with you. I was just like, well, CorpU Hawkins is gonna die. Well, when you said, and then when you get that scene where he apologizes, I was like, now I like him. So now I really know he is gonna die.

That's that's what I was about to say once he, that scene is perfect for making everybody team Hawkins. Yeah. It was like brilliant move, which is why I was like, oh, please don't kill him. And then he's teetering on the I beam. It's like, I feel that way. Yeah, because they had that scene where he's like, I'm really sorry.

I did bad. When that scene happened, where he turned his gun to kill my wife, wasn't watching the episode with me, but she was in the room and she was turned to me and went, oh, so he's the Hudson of this episode. Yeah. From the movie aliens where gonna kill us. Yeah. It's like, at that moment, he's very panicky.

Yeah. He's like every main for himself was kill him. Yeah. Like, and it was like, I, I, I really liked how they were playing with that of having you kind of like, oh, O Hawkins, don't be doing that. Yeah. And then later he redeems himself, which makes you, it makes him. Endearing to you, you, you get that connection of he can grow and you just, I loved it.

Yeah. I loved it. Yeah. I I'm, I'm having trouble finding the words because I just had so much fun

with this episode. Yeah. I also think that big picture, it's fascinating that the expanse, at this point, they've pointed out a couple of things that are just in space that when the crew is exposed to them, everybody is affected by them.

Except the V. And now they've found the thing that affects just the Vulcan and not the rest of the crew. So they're setting up this real like, oh great. This part of space is gonna always be dangerous to somebody like there, like setting it up as like there's just environmental impact across the board.

That is gonna be a problem. And the Trium D storyline, which is the B storyline in this. Trip sees an opportunity here. And he is like, this thing is this field of asteroids is full of TRID. Maybe we can get a hold of enough to actually protect our ship. And so he goes on his little Easter egg hunt of how do I get it?

And they have a great scene. I mean, literally every scene feels like it's gr it's well done. Mm-hmm him at the transporter, him and Mayweather. Mm-hmm, trying to just literally transport bits of asteroid, a board. And as they're doing. They can't get a firm enough lock and they end up, first of all, breaking the transporter.

Second of all, breaking it in a way that made me think, boy, they're being very casual about what just happened of asteroid are literally fused into the wall ceiling and floor crews gonna, yeah, he crew joke out of it. The repair crews gonna love this, but. It's like the very casual response that I was just like, well, that's a pretty catastrophic problem that just, yeah.

Just happened. Their next step is to actually fly out to the asteroids. And again, this is an episode where we've seen episodes recently with long guest star lists and. It's clear that they view those as information heavy. Like we have all these guest stars. There's gonna be a lot of talking. There's gonna be a lot of pushing forward to the story in this way.

This one only has one guest star at Shawn McGowan who plays corporal Hawkins. They spend a lot of time with special effects on a B storyline mm-hmm and the main storyline is taking place clearly on a sound stage. With a hallway. I didn't bother trying to figure it out. I didn't like go scene to scene to see the Scooby do of it all, but you know, they had one hallway.

And they reused it many different ways and they shot it from different angles because there's, they go down like two of the crew members go down one hallway and find a thing. And two other crew members go down a different hallway, you know, it's the same hallway, but it doesn't matter because they do enough with camera, angle and lighting and changing some of the, like a fallen beam or a hanging cord.

They do enough changing of that, that you can kind of ignore it. Like, yeah, I get what they're getting to. It doesn't have to look perfect in order to be a different place. Meanwhile, the money is being spent on a special effects budget for two guys who are basically like, let's go find some rocks. Yep. And they fly into the asteroid field.

And the sequences of flying through the asteroid field are harrowing they're. Yeah. They're flying around asteroids that are coming literally from every direction and can at any moment change direction, change. Yep. To land on one of them. And again, in I'm gonna keep going back to every line of dialogue.

Serves a purpose when they land on the asteroid, as they're coming in, you get trip feeding data to Mayweather saying. You're off on this direction. You've, you've gotta match the angle. He's saying all this stuff, Mayweather's like, got it. Understood. Like he's flying beautifully in a Haring situation and then they crash land on the asteroid and Mayweather's response is I hope you don't tell anybody about that landing.

I loved, loved, loved trips. Are you kidding? I'm gonna recommend, they give you a medal, like the idea that this is the scenario that they're in, where they are in circumstances where trip's response to that rough landing is, I can't believe you did it. Yeah. And just like, I mean, and he says, I'm gonna recommend, they give you a medal.

He's his commanding officer. He likely does write up a report that recommends he'd be given a commendation for his ability to do what he did. Yeah. So they are in the B storyline, but they're doing stuff which is equally remarkable. If the entire episode and terrifying had only been about flying through that asteroid field.

That's an episode. That in fact, they're on the surface of this

asteroid, that any moment another asteroid, cause I'm crashing down on them at any moment. Yes. It's like, there's this looming danger. Every moment they're on that asteroid.

And that in fact is what happens. A asteroid changes direction. There is a massive collision looming.

They have to get away. They barely do. And their shuttle craft is severely damaged. They get back. They're able to get back on one thruster. They make the, the comment as they're flying back to the enterprise, get the shuttle bay crew prepared for a rough landing. So they've got some sort of emergency response team on hand for the shuttle craft, which just barely makes it back at this point.

This is when they find out that Archer and the away team is in danger and they need the second shuttle to go get them. Mm-hmm . So now there's, the clock now becomes an issue. There's a delay of a couple of hours. To Paul is losing control. The Vulcans are trying to kill them. This part of space is chaotic at best.

There's so much stuff. There's so many moving parts to the story and Livingston and the actors and the writers. They pull it off. It's a perfect episode. As far as I'm concerned, we haven't had a lot of these in. Our discussions around this series. But this episode for me is an absolute solid day. Plus it's just like, this is, this is one that you could show to somebody who'd never seen the show before and then enjoy it.

I think you'd enjoy this because it's just a great, scary spaceship sci-fi story. And somebody could watch this and be like, oh yeah, I don't need to know the series. I don't need to know all the details they give enough of it. And then. Matt. I'd like to invite you to talk about the ending ending.

Oh, that's so heartbreaking, man.

The, this is where it does feel a little bit like nightmare Elm street, you know, Fred Cougar esque, because it basically ends with a. Dream sequence a nightmare sequence of TOPA. So it, it looks like the episode's over with her going to movie night and basically shaming flock and, uh, and trip for talking too loudly during the movie, which I thought was great.

Cause it's like, all this feels very believable and then it starts to get a little weird and you start to realize, oh no, this is not a real thing that's happening. And it turns into this just horrifying nightmare sequence of DePaul, feeling like she's losing control again. And when she wakes up, it's just her basically in a cold sweat, you know, just like terrified because she's clearly gonna have a long recovery yeah.

For what's happened to her. And she's definitely not outta danger. Like this is something that's gonna be looming over her. Yeah. For the rest of the season. And on top of that, I did like how. The captain is not going to use the TRID. Yeah. That trip found because he doesn't wanna put her in danger.

They have that sequence where he suggests she suggests leave me on the next planet.

Yes. Like I will just be able to survive on a habitable planet and he's like, no, that's not gonna happen. And she's like, she goes back to the, the Vulcan precept of the value of the one doesn't outweigh the value of the many. Correct. And he is like, not in this case, I get to make that call.

so there's, there's this wonderful bond.

Yeah. The bond between the two of them it's showing where that is, it shows where the captain's mindset is, you know, like he's gonna protect every member of his crew as best he can. And he thinks that this is the best path forward. Um, it's I just loved it. Yeah. Like I, I just wanna we've we bagged on season two, a lot.

Yeah. And we were critical of season one, but we really bagged on season two and we kept joking around of, well, let's wait till season three. That's where it gets good. Yeah. This, this season, this is, this episode is a prime example of why I was so excited to get to season three. Yeah. Because there are episodes like this one they're not every week, but there are these episodes that start to happen in the show now.

Yeah. Which are like, except. And this is where the show hits its stride. Yeah. And you start to get these a plus episodes that you could watch outta sequence. Show them to somebody who doesn't know what the show is, and they're gonna have a blast watching it. Yeah. This is definitely one of those

episodes.

Yeah. We live in an era with prestige television and the way the television industry has changed, where we end up with longer gaps between seasons. Shorter seasons overall, a different approach to storytelling. Like what is a story arc in an episode was a, what is a story arc in a season? Even a show that shows up like strange new worlds and says, we're going back to the old original series episodic format.

It has a thread. It has an ongoing mm-hmm like seasonal storyline. It isn't. In the foreground, the way that it is and shows like discovery, perhaps, but it's still there. So it's a different take on the way shows are produced than they used to be. And enterprise, I think really struggles and suffered from the fact that they were trying to do as many episodes per season, as they were.

When you look at the way television manages itself in a lot of cases now it's. Well, you're gonna have eight episodes. Like the series is OB one quality episodes. You get like, you've got this many episodes for OB one. They're each going to be a movie. They're each gonna tell a clear story, but they're also going to be a part of each other.

They're all gonna have to knock it out of the park to the same degree and not every show is going to be as great as every other show. That is the approach in production. I think when you have eight, each of the eight has to be great. I think that for me, when I look at shows that have this many episodes, 24 episodes, 26 episodes per season eight would still be a good number.

if eight episodes knock it out of the park. That's enough of a percentage for me. Like if every third episode feels like, Ooh, that was a good one that keeps me coming back. That keeps me happy. Yeah. And that was my main problem with season two, it felt like it was a long, dry spell of not great. We weren't going three episodes and then hitting a great episode.

We were going four or five and then it was not a home run. It was like maybe a. As opposed to knocking out of the park. So it was like, it really started to wear on you as a viewer to say like, okay, what are they do? Do they know what they're trying to do? Do they know? Like, I, I get a sense that they feel like they're going somewhere, but are they gonna be able to, and season three is where it hits that stride again, of like, okay, not every single one's gonna be an, a.

But when it's an a, it's an a, and this for me was an a, I really, really enjoyed this episode. And as we just said, this felt to me, like if I was showing this to somebody who didn't know the show, I would very comfortably pick this as an episode to show. I would be like, let's start with this one. So listeners, as you could, no doubt tell by now, Matt and I are fully on board with.

Impulse, but what did you all think about it? Please let us know. You can reach out through the contact information in the podcast description or on YouTube. You can just scroll beneath the image of our smiling faces and leave a comment there, Matt, before we sign off, do you have anything you wanna talk to the listeners about for your other channels?

Yeah, undecided. I have a video that should be out by the time this comes out about exploring the solar panel breakthroughs in the state of the solar panel market in 2022, there's been a lot of interesting things happening. And so I just put together a video that kind of encapsulates everything in one in one place.

As for me, you can check up my website, Sean farrell.com. You can find out information about my books there, or you can go to Amazon or you can go to Barnes and noble or your local bookstore. All of those are ways to find my books. And I've also got some news that I have been sitting on for a while. Yeah.

And yes. It is that I have recently I've, uh, can finally publicly announced that I have a book that will be coming out next year. It's gonna be coming from a publisher named pixel and Inc. And it is a middle grade book. So if you know anybody in your life, who's maybe 10, 11, 12, maybe 13 or 14, who likes aadventurous stories that involve robots and smugglers and pirates and.

Bad things happening to good people. Keep an eye out for the Sinisters secrets of singe that will be coming out in 2023. And it's part of a series. The second book will be coming out in 2024 and I'm working on that second book. Now I just finished revisions on the first book and I am more than excited.

To share this with readers in the future. I will keep everybody apprised of when it starts to be available for pre-order and when it's coming out and may even be able to share some stuff like maybe some cover art in the future. So check that out. It's

a cool story. It's a very cool story.

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We will talk to you next time.